Rachel Leggett

Hi, I'm Rachel! 👋 I'm a web developer in beautiful Ann Arbor, MI.

I work on the core engineering team at Shopify, using Rails, GraphQL, and React.

Previously, I've worked on accessibility at Domino's and on internal tools for faculty and staff at the University of Michigan.

I own a knitting pattern design business called Arbor Twist. I teach classes about gauge and sock knitting at my local yarn store. I build online tools for knitters.

I pole dance, I have four cats, and my favorite TV show is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

You can find me online at these other places. ↗️

Public Speaking and Workshops

I love to teach and share what I have learned in order to reduce gatekeeping in my industries and empower others. I'm just getting started, but here's what I've done so far.

Web Development

Knitting

  • Size Matters: The Whys and Hows of Gauge — Spun, two-day workshop, February 2019, April/May 2019, June 2019, October 2019.
  • Classic Cuff Down Socks — Spun, three-day workshop, January/February 2019, May/June 2019.

Writing

I have two fledgling blogs after taking an eight-year break from blogging. None of that old content is available, to everyone's relief.

DevYarns

Technical blog with a focus on web development and accessibility.

Take a look →

Arbor Twist Blog

Knitting and knitting pattern design blog.

Take a look →

Selected Projects

Here are a couple projects I am proud of.

Knitting Recipes

React | Sass | Bootstrap | Netlify | Personal Project

This React application allows knitters to generate hat and sock knitting patterns based on their own custom measurements and stitch size (called "gauge"). In addition to using the sock pattern generator in the Classic Cuff Down Socks class I teach 2-3 times a year, upwards of 50 users per week use this application.

I recently started a YouTube channel where I am documenting the process of auditing Knitting Recipes for accessibility and fixing the bugs I find.

Software Management Interface

Python | Flask | MySQL | JavaScript | University of Michigan

This Flask application provides an interface to facilitate the U-M College of Engineering Student Computing Environment team's process for software evaluation, licensing, and deployment, as well as populating a public software listing webpage. As the lead developer of this ongoing project, I collaborated with business analysts, project managers, and project owners to gather functional and business requirements.

In 2020, I tripled the Lighthouse performance score for this application through a combination of refactoring the backend and optimizing the frontend.